“In transgressing and lying against the LORD, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey: and the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment,” Isaiah 59:13-15.
The multiple means by which we are informed of the events taking place in this world today — newspapers, television, the internet — are agencies of which it can be said that they are dominated by lies and falsehood.
If those who compile the reports are not promoting lies themselves then they are by and large, reporting the lies of others!
What we read and hear and view simply cannot be taken at face value! There was a time when the news media could be expected to report ethically, with a large degree of honesty and rectitude and could be trusted to convey a trustworthy account of matters reported upon. The absolute opposite is the case today in 99% of cases.
British prime ministers have repeatedly told lies and that most blatantly and when confronted with their deceit have not the grace or ability to even blush!
On the local front here in Ulster, undeniable facts have surfaced which show that which the DUP leadership claim is a great reversal of and deliverance from the scandalous impositions of the “Northern Ireland Protocol” is a complete and utter sham. The Protocol was devised by the British government and was intended to protect the EU single market, while avoiding the imposition of a ‘hard border’ that might incite a recurrence of conflict and destabilise the ‘relative peace’ that it is claimed has held since the end of the Troubles.
What that evilly devised scheme actually achieved was the shutting out of Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, and despite the claims of Donaldson and his lackeys, that is still our position.
A headline in the ‘Belfast Newsletter’ of Wednesday, March 13th, indicates that to be so.
Lord Empey uncovers £192m budget for Irish Sea border posts – saying frontier is ‘alive and kicking’
‘The cost of constructing border inspection posts required as a result of the NI Protocol / Windsor Framework could reach £192.3 million, the government has revealed.’
So much for the removal of the border imposed by the ‘Protocol’!
But this evil phenomenon of lies is worldwide! Every time a national leader opens his mouth, deceit invariably pours forth! Biden and Trump publicly vie with each other to see who can tell the biggest lie as they battle it out for the minds of the American people.
The conflicts in Ukraine and Israel are immersed in deceit. The events taking place in North Korea, China, Iran are all shrouded in the fog of disinformation, designed only to mislead.
At home here in the UK, we daily read of an army that is undermanned, a navy that can just about stay afloat and an air force running out of training jets!
Just what are we to believe?
Is Putin really threatening nuclear war? Is the UK a prime target of the madman? What of the Royal family? Is it beset with all the problems that the media allege? What are we to believe about the NHS? Then again, is the definition of a man and woman, set down by God Himself, really going to be altered and that alteration imposed upon us whether we accept it or not? After all, abortion has been so imposed, even though many believe it is but the legalised murder of the unborn. In like fashion, the vile practice of sodomy, deemed by God as an ‘abomination’ and but a short time ago regarded as a criminal offence, is now declared legal and beyond criticism, with penalties falling upon any who dare call it what it is!
These and ten thousand other contradictions and wrangles make up the swirling currents of daily events! In the midst of such mayhem and turmoil, the wise will turn to God’s Word for an answer.
The words of the prophet Isaiah at the head of this article will provide us with counsel by which we may weather the storm of deviousness and find the ‘right way’!
I. THESE WORDS WERE SPOKEN TO A PEOPLE WHO WERE SEPARATED FROM GOD.
“But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness. None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity,” Isaiah 59:2-4.
1. Sin always divides a people from God. In truth, the Lord would draw near to man and offer Him the wonderful benefits of His grace and mercy. So it was in the dawn of time after Adam and Eve had sinned against the Lord. “And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?” Genesis 3:7-8.
Sin had driven Adam and Eve from the presence of God. They sought to hide from Him. It was He Who came seeking them! God’s disposition toward the world may be seen in the words of the Lord Jesus to Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” John 3:16. Christ’s coming into this world to “seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10) displays the heart and mind of God.
Man with his penchant for sin, his depraved nature, would turn his back on God and refuse His merciful pleas.
2. With his back toward God and the light of truth, man is enveloped in shadow and darkness. As a result, as the prophet says, his hands are defiled with blood, his fingers with iniquity and his lips have spoken lies, and his tongue hath muttered perverseness. It is man’s estrangement from God that is the true source of the maelstrom of deceit that has ever flooded the world.
3. Man dwells in an environment of poison and violence and death. So it is stated in verses 3-7 of this passage.
What we see forming around us today, is that which immersed the world in violence and immorality and then in the universal flood of God’s judgment back in the days of Noah. Genesis states how it was in those bygone days. “And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth,” Genesis 6:13. Christ said that such days would develop again just before He returned. “And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all,” Luke 17:26-27.
II. MAN, WITHOUT GOD, IS THE AUTHOR OF HIS OWN DAMNATION
“Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace. Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men. We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for judgment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far off from us,” Isaiah 59:7-11.
How accurately this sets forth the condition of mankind today! What a mockery this makes of the proud and boastful utterances of such organisations as the United Nations, the World Council of Churches and the Vatican! Their pontifications and promises of peace and security are repeatedly shown to be vain and baseless! Rightly God has said of them that they are announcing “Peace, peace; when there is no peace,” Jeremiah 6:14, 8:11. Nothing could be more deceitful and dangerous than to proclaim peace when there is no peace. That can only lead to destruction!
This world is hastening down the road to hell with cries of ‘PEACE’ on its lips and ringing in its ears. Here in Ulster, there is just such a ‘peace’ which is cruelly deceitful and ruinous. Since the inauguration of the so-called ‘Good Friday Agreement’, there has been an acceleration downward and away from the security and peace that I knew as a boy in the late forties and early fifties.
FOOLS
We have prating, cavorting fools in Stormont telling us that a new and better era is dawning. Think of that! Can we really expect good to come out of a union between those who hold their political positions as a result of terrorism on one hand and those who have cast overboard all that they once claimed as sacred, in order to maintain their political status by pleasing the perverted views of the powers that be? Such a political ‘amalgam’ can only bring disaster!
What Isaiah said of the efforts of the rebels in his day is true of Stormont and the ecumenical churches here. “They . . . weave the spider’s web. Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works: their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands,” verses 5-6. Nakedness and shame and despair is all that will come of the ‘weaving and knitting’ of the deceivers in church and state today.
Here is God’s prediction of the outcome of the religious and political machinations taking place before our eyes.
“The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace. Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men,” verses 8-10.
III. WHAT IS IT WE SHOULD BE DOING TODAY IN THE MIDST OF THIS CONFUSION?
“And the LORD saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment. And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him,” verse 15-16.
John Gill says of these words: “The Lord took notice of all this, and resented it, though in a professing people, that there was no judgment or discretion in matters of doctrine and worship; no order or discipline observed; no justice done in civil courts, or in the church of God; no reformation in church or state.”
I have no doubt that, because God’s people are largely complacent in the midst of today’s turmoil, the Lord is very much displeased with the reaction of His people toward it!
Today’s circumstance ought to be of concern to God’s people that there is ’no judgment’. The word first appears in the Bible in Exodus 15:25 and is there translated as “an ordinance”, a “law” to be observed.
Today, there is no observing of God’s Law and I speak not just of the worldling but of God’s people. There is not the reaction that God would have His people engage in when His law is broken. There is a carelessness and negligence on every hand within the borders of God’s house! Sin is excused and backsliding goes unchallenged. This naturally leads on to indifference toward the wickedness seen within society. There is not the challenging of the ungodly practices seen in the ecclesiastical, political and public life of the nation.
This attitude amongst His people displeases the Lord. That ought to concern us.
INTERCESSION
Here is what the Lord is looking for and wondering at the lack of such. He is looking for ‘intercessors’!
Confusion there is undoubtedly, and that in turn breeds despair and depression. Oh how that must please the devil! A despairing people will not pray and prayer is what is required today and what it is the Lord is looking for. The word is translated in Genesis 32:1 by the English word ‘met’.
Friends, that is what the Lord wants today. He wants His people to meet with HIM and spread their needs before Him. What is needed is pleading like that of Ruth as she implored her mother-in-law, Naomi. “And Ruth said, Intreat (same word as ‘intercessor’) me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God,” Ruth 1:16. Ruth was pleading that she might stay with Naomi and she asked not to be required to remain in Moab.
Such earnest supplications are needed today for the preservation of the maintenance of God’s truth in our land.
I believe we have entered the days of the final apostasy of mankind from God and His truth. That being so, I do not expect a reversal of today’s downward trend. Rather, as Paul says: “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived,” 2 Timothy 3:13. We are in the days of Psalm 2:1-3. “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.”
Mankind is casting away the moral restraints of God’s holy Law and breaking out into the wilderness of lawlessness. There will be no recovery from such — only judgment. “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure,” Psalms 2:4-5.
Daniel spoke of these days. “When the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up. And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand,” Daniel 8:23-25.
It is out of the ‘lawlessness’ we see building up today that the Antichrist will ‘stand up’. Paul taught the Thessalonians this truth. “And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming,” 2 Thessalonians 2:8.
I do not believe that we can or should look for God’s intervention in mercy but rather for, as Peter says, “a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries,” Hebrews 10:27.
LATTER DAYS
Such a view is not the outcome of despair and unbelief but rather a viewing and pondering of what the Bible says of the latter-day rebellion against God and a noting of the world scene in the light of those same Scriptures. Sadly, as the Saviour said, many Christians will be unaware of the approach of those days, being unbelieving and asleep. Only those ‘watching’ for that which Christ said would be the signs of the end will recognise its approach.
“Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh,” Matthew 24:42-44.
This is a day for ceasing to listen to the vain and depraved musing of men and rather it is a time to spend much time in the Lord’s presence, meeting with Him and considering before Him what His Word tells us of the last days.
It is only thus we will be ready.
Let us learn from the very informed and godly Anna, who was rightly expecting the first coming of Christ.
“And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity; and she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem,” Luke 2:36-38.
Anna was informed of the approach of the first advent of the Saviour because she “departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.” it was by talking with the Lord that she learned of the soon coming of Christ.
Surely there is a lesson there for us all.
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
14th March 2024